一城一書活動時間表

What happens when one of the funniest and smartest authors around gets
interviewed by a MythBuster? Hear which space legends might be as combustible
as urban ones when Mary Roach and Adam Savage chat it up about Packing for
Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, San Francisco’s One City One
Book selection for 2011.

Before the conversation, enjoy the premiere of Rockets of
Yesterday, an eye-popping video tour of 1950s and 60s rocket dreams,
curated by archivist and space enthusiast Megan Prelinger.

Mary Roach is the author of the bestselling books Stiff:
The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. She lives in Oakland, California.

Adam Savage is an American industrial design and special effects
designer/fabricator, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters.

Packing for Mars will be available for purchase from Readers Bookstore and Mary will be signing after the program.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Life: A Cosmic Story, the
California Academy of Sciences’ all-digital planetarium show on the history of
life. Narrated by Jodie Foster, the show plays daily in the Morrison
Planetarium through May 2012. The show’s core concept is that all life on
Earth evolved from a common ancestor and that life’s origins begin with dark
matter and the first stars—a pedigree 13.7 billion years in the making. The
Academy drew on the expertise of outside advisers and its own scientists to
ensure that even the tiniest details were scientifically accurate. To produce
the show’s complex imagery, the Academy’s Visualization Studio, which includes
veterans from Industrial Light & Magic, Pixar, and Lucasfilm Animation,
collaborated with Stanford University and the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications. Reservations: Seating is limited. To
reserve a place today, visit http://bit.ly/mQKpwa or call 800-794-7576.

We'll listen to and share thoughts on musical segments chosen as an
accompaniment to Packing for Mars,
this year's One City One Book selection. No knowledge of classical music is
necessary and everyone is welcome! We'll also save time for mixing and
mingling. Who knows who you'll meet when you're here? Friendships,
business partnerships, and artistic collaborations have been forged over the
past three years of Salon97 listening parties. Join us for a fun evening of
classical music, friends and refreshments!

Local author Megan Prelinger will
present a vivid slideshow of newly revealed space art from her recent book. She
will explain how rockets and spaceships were imagined before they were real,
and how some fantasies of 50 years ago have taken to the sky while others live
only in science fiction. Her book is based on the hundreds of lushly
illustrated recruitment advertisements that appeared in the rocketry and
aeronautics magazines in the 1950s and 60s.

Join us for this fascinating talk from Alex Filippenko
, Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley, currently the Richard and Rhoda
Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences and one of the world's
most highly cited astronomers. Observations of very distant exploding stars
(supernovae) show that the expansion of the Universe is now speeding up, rather
than slowing down due to gravity as expected. Other, completely independent
data strongly support this amazing conclusion. Dr. Filippenko’s talk explores
how over the largest distances, our Universe seems to be dominated by a
repulsive "dark energy" which stretches the very fabric of space
itself faster and faster with time.

Author talk from Michael
Nielsen one of the pioneers of quantum computing. Nielsen argues that we are living at the dawn of the most dramatic change in
science in more than 300 years. This change is
being driven by powerful new cognitive tools,
enabled by the internet, which are greatly
accelerating scientific discovery. Learn, for
example, how 250,000 amateur astronomers are working together in a project called Galaxy Zoo to understand the
large-scale structure of the Universe, and how
they are making astonishing discoveries,
including an entirely new kind of galaxy.

SpaceCraft: Mini Plushie Workshop

Excited to make your own cuddly plushie but don’t
want another teddy bear? This is the workshop for you! In this fun
hand-sewing workshop GoGo
Craft will teach you how to make your very own space-themed mini felt astronaut, retro rocket ship,
planet, or alien that is perfect for gift-giving (if you can bear to part with
it, that is). Perfect for teen and adult crafters of any level!
Materials, tips, and tricks provided.

Your favorite sweater snuck into the dryer and now
it will only fit your dog? Not to worry! In this workshop GoGo Craft will teach you how to make a
recycled sweater into a cup cozy that will make you the talk of the coffee
shop! Decorate your cup cozy with space-themed felt rocket ship or
constellation to make it out of this world! Perfect for teen and adult crafters
of any level! Materials, tips, and tricks provided.

Large Screen Videos in SF Main Library, Koret Auditorium – Thursdays at
Noon

November 3: The Right Stuff

Covering some 15 years, The Right Stuff recounts the formation of
America's space program, concentrating on the original Mercury astronauts,
including Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first
American to orbit the earth.

November 10: Apollo 13

True story of the moon-bound NASA mission that developed severe trouble
and was stranded 200,000 miles from Earth in a crippled spacecraft, radioing
back to earth, “Houston, we have a problem.” Astronauts and ground crew race
against time and the odds to bring ship and crew safely back to Earth.

November 17: Wall-E

Disney and Pixar join forces for this computer-animated tale about a
wide-eyed robot who travels to the deepest reaches of outer space in search of
a newfound friend.